the Goverlan Remote Administration Suite can pick up quite a bit of the daily management slack when it comes to managing Windows machines on your network – at a fraction of the price and complexity of SCCM

Jonathan Hassell is an author, consultant and speaker on a variety of IT topics whose published works include Learning Windows Server 2003 from O'Reilly and regularly appears in periodicals such as Windows® IT Pro, PC Pro and TechNet Magazine.

Hassell found Goverlan to offer advanced systems management and remote support within a simpler, more intuitive console and for a much smaller cost. “For day-to-day administration tasks, SCCM may not represent the best choice. If your organization is not making substantial investments in a virtualized desktop infrastructure or in mobile device management, then the Goverlan Remote Administration Suite can pick up quite a bit of the daily management slack when it comes to managing Windows machines on your network – at a fraction of the price and complexity of SCCM. Unlike SCCM, Goverlan has no database back-end which means administering and managing users and machines in real time. Goverlan‘s Scope Actions allows administrative tasks to be pushed directly to target machines and users individually or in a group in a quick, efficient way. Also, technicians can save customizable sets of frequently used actions and targets and automate these tasks to run when needed,” explained Hassell.

Hassell renowned Goverlan for its remote support capabilities, remarking; “SCCM does not have a compelling story when it comes to remote support. The Goverlan Remote Administration Suite, on the other hand, has a comprehensive set of remote control features, including the ability to perform remote control of thin client sessions on Microsoft’s Terminal Services or Remote Desktop or the Citrix Xen platform, a chat feature to communicate directly with your remote user, active and passive session shadowing, and support for session stretching across multiple monitors. SCCM has no dedicated set of features for remote control, relying only on integration with the Remote Desktop Connection client already built into Windows.”

Additionally, Goverlan’s deployment was found to be faster and smoother and its hardware requirements much leaner when compared to SCCM’s hefty prerequisites. “SCCM has intensive hardware requirements for the host management server, with recommended configurations involving dual- or quad-core processors, a SQL Server database, and 4-8 GB of memory just to get started, as well as hundreds of gigabytes of disk space—even for small sites. In contrast, Goverlan Remote Administration Suite is a single product that you install in minutes, with agents that deploy in seconds a piece. The administration and reporting can all be done from a single interface, which can run on any Windows workstation even with modest hardware requirements involving single-core processors and 1 GB of memory (or even less). The agents that Goverlan Remote Administration Suite installs are very lightweight, under 5 megabytes in size, and have absolutely no noticeable impact on performance,” Hassell expounded.

Lastly, Goverlan’s pricing schema was found to be simple and cost-effective, while SCCM’s was convoluted and much higher. “A System Center license, covering a single two-socket server running an unlimited number of virtual machines runs $3,607 (with that price doubling for every additional two physical processor sockets you license), not counting fees for additional host running server operating systems and client access licenses. In contrast, Goverlan Remote Administration Suite is licensed at $699 on a per-administrator basis—you purchase one license for every administration employee that will use the product. There are no per-managed device client access license fees, nor is the product licensed based on the number of processors or other hardware components in a given host. In addition, you don’t need additional hardware to run the product: its reporting engine and agents run fine on existing systems and don’t require expensive big-iron SQL database hardware for monitoring or logging,” illustrated Hassell.

In conclusion, Hassell summarized; “If managing VDI or mobile devices is not critical to your infrastructure, then Goverlan is worth a look. It’s a fraction of the cost and effort of SCCM. If your infrastructure requires VDI and mobile device management, SCCM plus Goverlan should be considered for more robust and efficient systems administration.”

Click here for the full article by Jonathan Hassell, released on Dec 18th 2012.

About PJ Technologies: PJ Technologies, the creators of Goverlan®, is a leading provider of systems management software. PJ Technologies’ solutions are entirely implemented and managed from within the client’s infrastructure, thereby fostering security, integrity and control. http://www.Goverlan.com

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